Not Letting You Go
by EnglishPoet18
Summary: "Now they were fucked. Everything was fucked. And it was all his fault." CARYL, rated T. I own nothing from The Walking Dead


...

"Carol...talk to me...let me hear your voice. _Carol_!" Daryl's voice grew shrill as his panic increased.

Things had gone wrong, so very wrong. It wasn't supposed to happen this way, not at all. She wasn't supposed to be here and he shouldn't have allowed her to stay when there had been so many unknowns.

Now they were fucked. Everything was fucked.

And it was all his fault.

...

In the back of her mind she thought she heard someone calling for her, but she couldn't force herself to reply. She lingered on the outskirts of consciousness, almost scared to allow herself to surface. It was bad...that much she knew.

And that wasn't much at all considering how fast everything had happened. One minute she and Daryl had been leaving the abandoned hospital, set for Grady when the earth had begun to shake around them. Daryl hadn't been more than four steps from her, but at that moment he might as well have been a mile. She remembered reaching for him and his panicked face staring back at her.

Then her world had gone black.

...

Daryl bit his lip as he tried once more to shift the concrete that lay over his foot off of him, but to no avail. He was trying his best not to panic, but every minute that passed with Carol not saying a word was utter agony. One minute they had been walking out of the building and the next shit had started falling all around them. He had seen Carol go down and he had lunged for her, but it wasn't fast enough to stop the rubble from knocking her down. He never got to touch her before he was knocked to the ground by a piece of stupid fucking concrete pinning him to the floor by his boot.

And now weren't they in a fucking mess?

The longer he remained stuck, the more desperate he grew until he was nearly frantic to get to her. He had a brief moment of insanity where he wondered how badly he might bleed out if he simply severed his foot off at the ankle. He could reach his knife...

"Daryl?"

Carol's voice was like music to his ears. He turned his head in the direction of her voice, but he couldn't see her because there was just too much shit in the way blocking his view. He could hear the pain in her voice though and it fucking broke him in two.

"I'm here. Can you move?" He tried to keep his voice steady for her sake, but he worried that she would still hear the tremble to his voice anyway. She was always so damn observant.

"Not really...my legs..." Her voice broke and he cursed under his breath as he tried once again to free his foot.

"Don't panic. Only my foot is pinned and I've almost got it out." He lied because his foot was nowhere closer to being freed than it was when the heavy concrete had first fallen on it.

"What happened?"

He sighed as he let his eyes sweep the rubble around him for the thousandth time as if an answer lay there waiting to be found. "Not sure. I thought it might have been an explosion or maybe an earthquake..." Fuck, he didn't know what had happened.

"Are there earthquakes in Georgia?" Her voice was so soft and he closed his eyes with a silent whimper.

"Hell if I know. I failed geography in school."

He waited to hear the sound of her chuckling at his attempt at humor, but he was met with only silence. For some reason the silence scared the teetotal shit out of him and he scrambled for something to say to keep her talking. Anything, just so that he knew that she was still lucid.

"Carol? Don't stop talking, sweetheart."

"I'm scared, Daryl," she whispered.

_Christ. _

He reached out with his hand and began batting away small pieces of concrete and metal. If he could just see her...God, he needed to see her. They weren't going to die like this, someone would come for them. Except as soon as that thought entered his mind an even scarier thought replaced it.

_No one knew where they had gone. _

"Where are you? Can you move your hand toward the sound of my voice?" There was no erasing the anguish in his tone this time.

He heard her shuffling around and several small pebbles skittered in his direction as she moved about. They hadn't been that far from one another before this had happened so he couldn't understand why he couldn't see her. He kept reaching for any debris that he could reach while hearing her slowly doing the same. He feared that at this point if he saw her he might not be able to take it. What if she was really bad off? His heart thumped painfully withing his chest as he continued his mindless task.

And then as he pushed on a piece of metal and it slid a fraction of an inch to the left, he was greeted with her face staring back at him. He could have wept in relief. He inched his torso over as far as possible and stretched out his hand toward her. She responded in kind and the tips of their fingers grazed.

He met her striking blue eyes full on. "It's gonna be okay."

Her eyes filled with tears and she pulled her hand back to swipe at her cheeks as they spilled down towards the ground.

"How do you know that? No one knows we're here, Daryl."

"I'll find a way out of this. I'll think of something." He tried to keep his words reassuring, but he honestly had no idea how they would get out of this. He wasn't strong enough to lift the weight from his foot and Carol...well he still didn't know how badly she was faring. He assumed that her legs were pinned beneath something heavy and that terrified him.

He would take it all, every bit of the pain for her if he could. She didn't deserve that. She didn't deserve this life after the shit she had been dealt before. He wondered every day how she managed to go about each day the way she did without breaking. He marveled at her strength and utter beauty. So when he saw her wince in pain, he wracked his brain for a way to distract her.

"Hey, remember that time back at the prison that you and I watched the sun set?"

She blinked at him and smiled sadly in remembrance. They had taken watch together that night, playing cards and lounging around the tower as the evening wore on. They talked about anything and everything, their hopes, fears...even down to their most embarrassing memories. He had never felt so close to anyone in his life as he had her in that moment.

As the sun had begun to sink slowly towards the earth, he had scooted just a little closer to her, earning a smile for his efforts. Her fingers had brushed his own and somehow they had become entwined together, just two people holding hands while watching the sun set. It had felt so normal and ever since that moment things had been different between them. There was a shared closeness between them that hadn't quite been there before and it grew stronger with each passing day.

"I remember."

"Yeah, I beat you pretty bad at poker that night."

Carol's eyes flickered in surprise and he breathed a sigh of relief as some of her natural spark flared to life again. "You took advantage of my terrible card playing skills!"

He chuckled, "In all fairness, I warned you what would happen. Merle used to try and shit me all the time, but I got wise to his actions."

"I thought you were just being overly confident." She smiled softly. "I'll never forget that day. It was one of the best days of my life, hands down."

"Yeah? What made it so special?"

"You. Just being with you and spending time with you. Just you, Daryl."

Her words touched something deep inside of him and he felt his chest hitch. He rubbed his palms over his face and took a minute to gather his thoughts.

"If we don't get out of here..." He couldn't finish the thought and he wished he could take it all back as her face fell. It was growing dark though and at any time walkers could stumble through. Then what would they do? He could take down one or two, but any more than that and he wasn't so sure since he was physically handicapped at the moment.

"I love you, Daryl," she whispered.

He had longed to hear her say those very words for so long. Except now it felt too much like she was accepting defeat and that wasn't acceptable. "Don't say that. We're gonna make it out. Just need a little more time to come up with a solution is all."

"Daryl, look at me."

Reluctantly he turned his head to meet her gaze. He could see the lines on her face from where her tears had made tracks across her skin. He swallowed over a lump in his throat at the prospect of what she would say.

"Nobody knows we're here and neither of us has a way to lift the concrete enough to free our bodies. What do you think is going to happen? We need to face facts..."

"No."

"Daryl-"

"I said no!" He raised his voice to a high pitch, the panic within him making his words seem like a snarl. She flinched at his tone, but then she slowly nodded at him in consent. He closed his eyes, but he only saw visions of her.

The distinct sound of footsteps brought him to full alert. He twisted his body enough to grab his knife and met Carol's gaze. She held up her own knife and he nodded at her as they waited. With all of the rubble around them it was hard to tell whether the footsteps belonged to walker or human.

A strange face appeared several feet away from him a few minutes later and he could have cried out with relief. The guy appeared young, barely eighteen maybe, but he didn't seem to be hostile as he surveyed the situation.

"Holy shit. I thought I saw someone over here, but I thought it was just my imagination. I didn't think...Who are you?"

"We're just two people tryin' to find one of our own. We're no threat to you or anyone you may be traveling with. Just wanna get out of here, find our people, and go home," Daryl explained.

The guy tilted his head to the side, "Your friend?"

"Yeah," Daryl replied.

The guy seemed to mull this over for a minute and then he rolled his eyes upward and sighed as he walked over to Daryl. "This goes against everything I had planned, but I just can't leave you here like this. Damn it." He began pushing against the concrete pinning Daryl in place.

"No, help her first. Please," Daryl begged as he gestured in Carol's direction.

The stranger surveyed Carol's situation and then shook his head. "Can't. Gonna take at least two people to free her. Gotta free you first."

"What's your name?" Carol spoke for the first time.

The guy was silent for a moment as if debating over whether or not to say anything and then he shrugged. "Noah."

"It's nice to meet you, Noah. I'm Carol and this," her eyes flicked to Daryl, "this is Daryl."

His eyes swept back and forth between them. "You two married or something?"

"No," Carol replied.

"We could be," Daryl blurted out and Carol turned shocked eyes in his direction. He stared her straight in the eyes and repeated the words he had mulled over and over in his head for months. "I love you, Carol. There isn't anyone else on this earth for me, but you. That night we sat together in the tower, talkin' and laughin', I knew...hell I knew a long time ago that I wanted to spend the rest of my days by your side. There's no one I trust more than you."

Carol wiped frantically at the tears that spilled from her eyes, but she smiled at him. "Are you really proposing to me, _now_?"

Daryl chuckled and his eyes skirted to Noah who stood watching the whole exchange curiously. "You know how it is with us, Dixon's. It's never conventional and always unexpected."

Noah cleared his throat. "Look it's getting dark and this is great and all, but we're gonna need the light to see so we need to hurry. I don't relish being out here in the dark in the middle of the city."

Daryl nodded and Noah set to work on lifting the concrete from Daryl's boot. He had to leave them several times to search for something to use to counter the weight. He finally returned with a long pole that he wedged beneath the concrete and bared down on with all of his weight. Daryl tugged on his foot until after many agonizing minutes it slid free.

He wasted no time in moving to Carol where they used the same technique with the pole to remove the weight from her legs. She had been accurate when she had said she was pinned because it wasn't easy to remove the weight, but they finally managed and Daryl hurriedly slid her free. She had lost circulation to her legs so Daryl lifted her in his arms, carrying her like he would a child cradled to his broad chest.

He nodded at Noah, "I'd shake your hand, but I don't have any free so I'm just gonna say thank you. If you're in need of a group then we could offer you refuge with our own. It's the least we could do." Carol nodded in agreement.

Noah smiled softly, "Thanks, but I can't." He glanced outside to the setting sun. "I'd better get going."

"If you change your mind..." Daryl offered.

"Thanks. I appreciate it. Good luck." Noah tipped his head at them and disappeared through the wreckage leaving them alone once more.

Carol rested her head against his chest. "You know, this is oddly familiar."

He knew without asking that she was referring to the time when he had found her in the depths of the prison merely by chance. He had carried her cradled to his body in exactly the same way that he was doing now.

"Nah, this time is different," Daryl insisted.

"How so?"

"This time I'm not letting you go."

...

...


End file.
